head to head · open source
valkey vs node-redis
valkey has 27,258 GitHub stars, 1,318 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped today. node-redis has 17,584 stars, 1,979 forks, 159 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. valkey leads on adoption by 55% (27,258 vs 17,584 stars). valkey is written in C under BSD-3-Clause; node-redis is written in TypeScript under MIT. valkey has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, node-redis 11%. valkey was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (redis), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| valkey | node-redis | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 18K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 2.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick valkey if
- You weight community size — 27K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick node-redis if
- You want the node-redis feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and node-redis fits your workflow better
About valkey
Valkey is high performance data structure server. Serves key/value workloads first. Supports wide range of native structures plus extensible plugin system for new data structures and access patterns. Written in C, licensed BSD 3 Clause. Lives in key value store and NoSQL ecosystem, shares protocol lineage with Redis, and carries cache , database , key value store , redis , valkey client topics.
read the full valkey overview →
About node-redis
Node Redis is the official Redis client for Node.js, published by the Redis organization on GitHub under the redis npm package name. It is a modern, high performance client written in TypeScript and released under the MIT license, and it lives in the Node.js ecosystem, where it serves as the standard way for JavaScript and TypeScript applications to talk to a Redis server. The project has accumulated 17,581 stars and 1,974 forks over roughly sixteen years, and it remains actively maintained, with the most recent push dated 14 September 2026.
read the full node-redis overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is valkey or node-redis more popular?
valkey has 27,258 GitHub stars and node-redis has 17,584. valkey has the larger community by that measure.
Are valkey and node-redis free?
Both are open source. valkey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and node-redis under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between valkey and node-redis?
valkey is written in C and node-redis in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, valkey or node-redis?
Choose valkey if you want the larger community (27,258 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose node-redis if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.